Russo - afghan War

Lets discuss the russo-afgan conflict of 1979-1985.

 

Yeah. Hardly a tank war though. I remember when the news reports said the Russians were climbind down by pulling out tank brigades. Completely not realising they were leaving the mobile AAA vehicles there. ZSU-23-4 was perfect for that sort of thing - high rate of fire and elevation to engage the enemy high up in the hills.
Basically, Russia got stuffed (it was touted as their "Vietnam") but then again, we got stuffed a hundred years or so before, all we really got out of it was some good poetry by Kipling!!
Oli

 

The comparison with Vietnam is very good. Too much politics and corruption, I suppose, involved. Too little real need to win it. Lots of fanatism + the other superpower´s helping hand.

At the end - a smashed country. A huge area of wild banditry.

 

Not even, or not just, the politics and corruption. BBC news footage of Soviet troops, heliborne into action, crouching behind BMPs that were providing cover fire, the whole "feel" of the thing was Vietnam. Troops who didn't really know why they were there, most of whom didn't want to be, and not quite knowing who to shoot at (OK Vietnam - problems telling good guys from bad, Afghanistan mostly seeing the bad guys), it sort of turned into another "village war" - take the country one village at a time, but you can't rely on it staying taken (bad-guy-free).
Parallels continue (not knocking anybody) but a lot Vietnam vets memoirs indicate that they sort of went to pieces on coming home -(possibly disproportianate, maybe just the "naughty" ones felt a need to write memoirs). Likewise a good portion of Afgantsi turned to crime. Neglect by your own citizenry, who likewise had no idea what it was about, and lees interest, young men publicly being shipped home in coffins....
At least we Brits were spared all that when we tried to take the country!
Oli

 

Brits are special. Have long been. Your culture has incorporated the unique "science" of coping with foreign, wildly different cultures in a humane way. That´s why you have your voluntary Commonwealth and Americans or Russians just have some near or faraway haters.

Just imagine a possible fate of an Afgani or Vietnamese Ghandi-like figure.

It went rather wrong for you in Palestine, something I am not exactly proud of.

 

Actually I meant we were "lucky" in that our attempt to take Afghanistan was not a "television" war and was in a period of history when wars and casualties were very commonplace. Going to war was "the done thing", but I take your point about the cultures.
Palestine, yeah, whenever I read anything about that I always have to go back and re-read just which country they're talking about, thinking, "we wouldn't have done that, maybe they mean somebody else..."
Not one our best episodes
Oli